Rapunzel, Rapunzel why are you dead?

Rapunzel leaves home with hair hanging bright from around her throat.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel why are you dead?

She knows she is dead without a fairy tale praising her imprisoned state…
Without the lingering nostalgia of a princely rescue,
Without the savoring unfulfillment of an automated reality,
Arising out of exact measurement of a good cook’s recipe
Who plays chef everywhere…

But Rapunzel must know how to die
She must fall out of the bookish tower of blindfolded wait
Strange elevated beauty that drips from her skin
Which cannot be felt without a mirror…within her blood vessels
Her stomach…when she splits open herself with her hairpin
Her fingers enter her nerves and try to get that beauty out
Nothing. Nothing. She enters her guts. Still no beauty there.
The pain of emptiness. The pain of ugly dripping blood.
She was aghast at her ugliness!

A strange drizzling rain falls from within her dress
Into everywhere, where her hair rests in a bundle on the floor.
She stares at herself inside out…the monotony of a being
Awaiting a common dream that all prisoners of the tower are forced to see…
What delusions of a cramped isolation!
Every arrival of a prince seems the only destination.
What enforced short-sightlessness of Rapunzel
That can make a fairy tale happen!
Delicious failure of a mind’s inability to search for one’s own escape.

Rapunzel laughs out loud.
Her escape waits within herself...

But she must see what enthralls the eyes of the towers
That set her apart from the fascinating ugliness of the masses
Rapunzel must know what beauty keeps her still from
Knowing the beauty that howls of the forest outside
The sodden rain clogged mud of the ground beneath
The moist wind at the top of the tower…
The stunning rage of the sun’s breath down her legs
To soothe the hunger of her hair to become tangled
Impossible to be tamed into a braid.

Yet, Rapunzel, Rapunzel why are you still dead?

Rapunzel must find an answer to the Prince’s sweet delay.
Rescue was inevitable.
From tower to tower she must travel.
Rescue was inevitable.
To be rescued was her fate.

Hark! The prince comes.
The prince calls her to throw down her hair.
Rapunzel must now climb out of the tower
And into the ascertained happiness of the Prince’s hands.
Her fairy tale was coming to an end. Rapunzel laughs again!
The book was left with a few more words? Pages, maybe?
Rapunzel couldn’t let this happen.

With the final toss of her hair, she throws herself out of the window,
Her red hair screaming behind her to rescue her before it is too late
To wrap itself around her throat in a fantastic embrace of togetherness -
Rapunzel escapes before it is too late
Rapunzel becomes Porphyria’s death story.

She crawls out of the old page of my diary
Where prince charming keeps calling her name
From out of that turreted forest
Towers chasing her to employ her in their silence
Rapunzel must keep her feet moving
Even when plunging in her own blood
Even when her hair strangles
All the more, to remind herself of her escape
Before she hits the ground forever…and flies away.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel are you still dead?
No. She has rescued herself out of another fairy tale.